The KDE Project today announced the immediate availability ofKOffice 1.2. David Faure, KOffice
release coordinator and developer, noted that the release features "an
incredible number of improvements". What with a truly great
new (English-only) thesaurus, enhanced scriptability of suite components,
WYSIWYG on-screen display, bi-di text, KWord mail-merge and footnotes, and
KSpread database connectivity, enhanced printing and new sorting functionality,
who's to argue? And let's not overlook the constant improvements in the
filters, though the HTML import took a step back to take full advantage of
KHTML's powerful HTML parsing in the next release. Karbon14, the extremely
promising vector-graphics program (with SVG support!), is not officially
in this release but many of the packagers have packaged it as well.
'Nuff said, read the announcement or head straight to the servers and check it out yourself.

No, it does *not* do the same thing. The first patch completely disabled the About KDE box, the second patch toggles the user preference on whether or not to hide the About KDE box. At least with the later patch, a user has the ability to see the About KDE box if they wish.

the "brilliant" folks at redhat didn't even know how to turn it off with action restrictions until Waldo Bastian mentioned how to do it. so if their developers weren't aware of it, i'm suspicious that users will be.

in any case, i have generaly ceased to care about this. redhat will do what they will and the people will accept it as they will.

either it will be accepted fine and all will be happy at redhat and desktop linux will expand, or it will be a failure to the benefit of other linux offerings. in the case of failure, certain redhat developers will probably get the spanking they will have earned from redhat marketing and upper executives and things will change.

so either way, i'm not horribly concerned. i don't see how linux or kde will lose from this in the long term. the risk is all redhat's.

Actually freeedesktop.org wont' make a difference as all signals point in the direction that Red Hat currently only supports Gnome and in the future might even abandon KDE completely.

The only reason Red Hat integrated KDE in the first place was that Gnome _1_ was not mature enough as a framework. Gnome 2 definitely is (although immature and unstable at the moment):
Once the usability framework is completely integrated in Gnome2 and core applications such as evolution are ported to the GTK2/Gnome2 framework/libs Red Hat can focus on a single desktop that meets their demands. Then they will only have to support Gnome, which fits perfectly in all moves they have conducted up to now, such as donating only developers to Gnome and not to KDE.

One might even suspect a silent agreement between Red Hat, Sun, AOL and Ximian: Each one is developing essential parts for the Gnome-desktop to be succesful: The accesibility framework from Sun is an essential component for Gnome2, because its a *requirement* by the US government for applications to fit in its infrastructure.

If KDE is to deal with this, it will *have* to incorporate this too -- be it in its own way. I was surprised about the recent clash about the usability framework and KDE-developers, some of whom failed to see the importance of good usability. I think wvl (see usability mailingslist) is doing a good job with respect to this.

this comes back to the times when they choosed not to include KDE in the distro at all, then started supporting it very very lazily. and there are thousands of examples in which they clearly didn't do their job, even when GNOME was clearly in bad condition (the delay they had before 2.0), they preferred to say "Linux is not for the desktop", than starting to support KDE, even a fair bit. Now that GNOME is ok, they suddenly go out from nowhere saying "we will become a desktop distro", and as a result decide that Evolution and Galeon will be your mail and web tools on their desktop, breaking the homogeneity of KDE, in spite KMail/KNode/KOrganizer and Konqueror beeing very decent alternatives.

> I don't swallow the claims that redhat is evil and has it in for KDE.

sorry but i call "not submitting security patches for some major programs included in the distribution (RH7.3)", as unprofessionnal, and considering that they upgraded equivalent GNOME software (namely mozilla, that is used by galeon), for barely the same reason make me _really_ think that RedHat are not being honest _at_all_ to the KDE community. this added to all the other stuff that happened before from RH make me really think they clearly want to disadvantage KDE against GNOME. the reason why i don't like this is that
1- Linux is all about choice, and RH sits on that philosophy, which is a bad thing(tm), because they are the first Linux vendor -or very very close to, depending on where and when you look at-
2- other distros, such as Mandrake, manage to integrate both DE very correctly in their distro.
3- whatever, this is a troll anyway (thanx to the ones who fed)... but i'm not going to advise anyone to use RedHat.

So if I one day would create a distribution that didn't include KDE, it's because I have something against KDE? If a distribution doesn't include GNOME, it's because it has something against GNOME? Fucking Lycoris and Lindows, fucking gnome-bashers.

Btw, that they make sure that people don't "lose" their mails, "lose" their bookmarks, or have to relearn all the programs they are used to, just because they switch a desktop environment, is just being userfriendly.

That third party software doesn't integrate as well with the kde desktop as native kde programs, is just one more reason to help with freedesktop.org. If something doesn't work right, you have the choice to fix it, or to throw it away. Redhat chose the first, and they have every right to.

Users *shouldn't* know wether their program has been made with the KDE development framework, GNOME development framework or Mozilla development framework. (just like you don't know if something has been made with Delphi, Visual C, Visual Basic, ...)

On the other hand I wonder why they don't just remove KDE from their distribution.. A newbie who constantly clicks on next during installation will end up with Gnome, and no KDE. Someone who wants KDE will probably pick another distribution, after seeing all this. So who will install RH-KDE?

who the fuck are you saying that the users shouldnt know wether their programs. i am interested in it and i get nuts if i have apps using different widgetsets on my system. specially the new gnome button rearrangement thingy that pisses me completely off (yes i am a gnome user but i start to give gnome a warm fuck). i am thinking about switching to kde.

I'm not saying it, Red Hat is saying it, and alot of people is saying it too. It has been cited as one of the main reasons why the linux desktop isn't userfriendly.

Why does it look different? Why can't I embed gnumeric in kword?

Why does the user have to know anything about how it has been developed, how it works internally to use the program? He shouldn't know about it. (and this is even one of the gui guidelines of KDE)

Alot of people just want to work with a program, and don't give a fuck if it was made in KDE, Gnome, or Swahili. The development environment with which an application has been made shouldn't be the reason why you pick that application over another. Is that so hard to understand?

''On the other hand I wonder why they don't just remove KDE from their distribution..''

Maybe this would be a better solution for both, KDE and RH ?

''A newbie who constantly clicks on next during installation will end up with Gnome, and no KDE. Someone who wants KDE will probably pick another distribution, after seeing all this. So who will install RH-KDE?''

Uh, and if someone does (just in case a friend has told him to install KDE...)

What will he think of KDE? Get the point?
He will never get excited by KDE. If he's interested in OpenSource and
decides to get involved, the last thing he would think of would be KDE.
It's all about community. The users are what makes OpenSource projects big.
Well, he will not even have the chance to get excited about it. There is no
'about kde'-item in the help-menu anymore...

It's fair to deliver a complete KDE with as-good-as-possible intergation
of gnome-apps as it would be fair to deliver a gnome with kde-apps.
This is about competition between two big and good OpenSource projects.

Distributions like RedHat or Lycoris only do damage to _both_ of them.

juste a small fix: i am not saying that "If a distribution doesn't include GNOME, it's because it has something against GNOME" or KDE, i am saying that RedHat voluntarily include but then doesn't support KDE in their distro. In other words, i'd prefer they'd not include it _at_all_ than doing what they do, which is giving very bad advert for KDE (and RedHat too).
They cannot afford not to include KDE in their distro, because it's #1 Linux desktop (actually, much more people use KDE on RH than you would believe), so they include it, but, as they don't like it, they spend practically no effort maintaining it. They fund GNOME, the see themselves as KDE competitor.
What i dislike most of all in that RH behaviour is that it's totally against "OpenSource Spirit". See Mandrake, they are a great KDE backer, but include, package and maintain very well GNOME in their distro.

RH's KDE 3.0 distributed in RH 7.3 has been weirdly patched, and causes a lot of problems (see all these bug reports in bugs.kde.org, discarded because of that).
RH didn't provide ANY official updates for KDE 3.0.1 and 3.0.2.
KDE 3.0.3 RH updates were _broken_at_all_, and impossible to install. These leaves therefore RH 7.3 with a very weird KDE 3.0, full of bugs and security holes.

this is what i call unprofessionalism, and i target it as RH of course.

my remark about Mozilla was just to say: see, they know how to do well, but strangely they only do it for GNOME components (Mozilla by itself is not a GNOME component, but it is needed and used by Galeon, that happen to be a GNOME component, and, moreover, Mozilla is the default browser on RH's GNOME desktop).

Before some of you people post comments, you need to read more. RedHat's bashing of KDE has been all over the net for years, and in fact the lastest story can still be located on http://linux.com. Further more, RedHat pratically funds the Gnome project, while providing almost no support for KDE - if you don't believe me, look it up. Seeing how 75% of all Linux revenue was done by RedHat, what does it mean that they back GNOME ? That leaves way for tremendous finacial backing and support for the folks at GNOME. Bottom line, if you don't believe what we are trying to tell you people, just download Linux RedHat 8.0 Beta and see for yourself how they butchered KDE...

So, not giving money to the KDE project, is "Bashing the KDE project"? Are you kidding? Great, than I've been bashing KDE, Gnome, Apache, MySQL, Emacs, Vim, JBoss, and others. Heck, I've been bashing the Red Cross apparently. *oooh* I'm so evil. You *idiot*..

Btw, that it's "all over the net", is hardly any evidence. Look at the Greece case: "All computer games are banned!!". While it should actually say: "The commercial exploitation of computer games in internet cafés or commercial lan parties are banned. You can still buy and play whatever you want in a private setting such as at your home or with your friends". The internet isn't really known for the most accurate information source..

http://www.standaard.be/Archief/zoeken/DetailNew.asp?articleID=DST070920...
(registration required, it's in dutch). It is the electronic version of pretty much the most reliable newspaper here in belgium. They actually check stories if it's true or not.. (another example of how the internet isn't exactly the most reliable source of information: The Register reported that KOffice would be based on Mono and Qt#, which was picked up by a whole bunch of other sites.

Interesting parts of the article (damn, translating it is hard):

...
The law was issued on 30 juli. It prohibits each form of commercial exploitation of "electric, electronic, electromechanical" devices for games. Including games at hotels, coffeeshops, en the entire public domain. After a remark from a member of parliament, that there is a risk that the commercial exploitation would move to private places like appartments and private clubs, there was an addition to the law that in those places the commercial exploitation isn't allowed there neither. A video game on the computer at home is still allowed.
...
The owners of Internet cafes are furious, and are spreading the impression in foreign countries that no video games are allowed in Greece. Which isn't true. That explains also why Greek media isn't paying much attention to it.

That's why I said Gameboys (or Game Boys, not sure as I've never owned one). These are portable video game units generally played to kill time while waiting for something - usually in public. Neo Geo Pocket, Game Boy Advance and Wonderswan are all examples of such "private video game machines used in public".

koffice-1.2 will soon be available from my kde3 apt repository. It currently contains koffice-1.2pr2, and I'm in the process of compiling koffice-1.2. See the details at http://www.math.unl.edu/~rdieter/

If you like KDE, Koffice, etc. then get away from Redhat. They are always so late at delivering
the rpms, if they deliver them at all. That was the reason why I switched from Redhat to
Mandrake one year ago and I have never regretted it.

Some of you may have taken a look on my previous postings on this forum. Those of you that have done this probably know that I've been a RH user, and most of the time a happy one.

This is going to change, I'll switch distribution on my desktop machines as well as on servers (couple of web/database servers).

This is mostly due a bad support for KDE. I'm also disappointed in certain software selection RH does: it uses still LPR, Sendmail and WuFTP, which do have security or usability problems. Yes, I'm able to change these things manually, but why not use a distro that's secure straight out the box.

You'd do fine to go with SuSE or Mandrake (I prefer and use SuSE myself, but others like Mandrake better, so it's a tossup).

There are also a handful of minor name distros that have their diehard fans, Lycoris, Con.. something, the upcoming Xandros. All are KDE desktop solutions. Plus you have Gentoo, whose claim to fame is that it's all compiled on your system, but has a good rep for a KDE desktop.

Personally for somebody just looking to go with something well known and stable, I'd recommend SuSE or Mandrake, though. If you want to (and have time!) to play with all the rest, you might find a better match for your tastes.

Has anyone tried Kivio and found it completely broken? I am trying to use it on SuSE 8.0 and while it will let me drop objects on a sheet, I can't add text or draw lines between them. The lines never work at all, and text causes kivio to crash. Before I report this as a bug, I am wondering if anyone else is having this problem. I am wondering if it has problem running under anything other than KDE 3.0.3, I currently have KDE 3.0.2. I didn't run into any dependancy errors when I tried to install this, and I had the beta version working okay, although I didn't try kivio in the beta (silly me).